academic/other

ROUNDTABLE NOTES

On January 26, 2007 twenty-eight young, black and brown professionals met to defineCommunity Development. The first meeting was entitled Input v. Advocacy. It was designed to solicit input as to what the problems or hurdles are for community development rather than to “advocate” one’s own position or perspective on the issue.

After a dense two hours of icebreakers, group-think and prompts, the notes from this meeting of the minds can be accessed here with the long-term goal of enacting a realistic plan of action for community development.

THESIS PAPER

Brightening their Searchlight:Strategic Processing as a Tool for Counteracting Television’s Impact on the Marginalized Classroom

There is a friction between rearing good consumers and good people.

As a function of acculturation, television plays a remarkably large role in the daily lives of most, if not all, of today’s youth. Since my middle school rearing, after school television programming has come to embody principles and standards that seem to polarize those that welcomed me after three o’clock; principles that instead stand as pillars of popular consumer culture. My research project will probe into the effects of this gradual, yet marked, shift in aforementioned programming on today’s classroom environment.

While I am not among the earliest “TV generations,” my age group was among the first to be regularly exposed to reality television and pervasive cable television. The marked change between the five to eight programs perused during middle school and those available now is clear. Cable television mediated by investment corporations is driving children’s mentality outside of the home, in the classroom. In considering behavioral patterns mirrored in my classroom from popular television programs, I concluded that a dissection of hip-hop culture’s intense adaptation as a corporate marketing tool is requisite in evaluating the following factors: